Noche Buena y Navidad

Christmas back in Madrid was not as depressing as I'd thought it would be. Partly because after the marathon of finishing up work at school, getting ready for Christmas, planning Lisbon and then actually travelling there it was good to have some time to chill on my own.

I got back to Madrid late on the 23rd and got some much needed sleep in my own bed. Then the afternoon of Christmas Eve I had to brave the grocery store. The only one that was open was the Corte Ingles, a huge department store cum grocery store that dominates two blocks of my new neighborhood. It was of course frantic as if some strangely decadent doomsday sect was stocking up on bombons and sparkling wine. That's how I felt anyway. Knowing eeeeeverything would be closed the next day I went a little crazy. Of course I need that brie... Oooo look at this giant sack of walnuts. But it wouldn't be Christmas without a little over-consumption.

It seems like Christmas Eve is traditionally the most important time, celebrated with dinner and midnight mass. I ate witha friend of mine from the English group at COGAM, Valdimir, and a couple of his friends. There was an incredible over-abundance of food, which Vladimir tells me is a Russian tradition. It reminded me a little of Christmas with the Polish side of my family where there is always too much food, but not quite that much too much. Maybe it's a Slavic thing. After dinner we skipped the mass in favor of drunken karaoke (is there any other kind?) and tarot card readings (my out look seems good, in case you're wondering).

I woke up late Christmas day. Slowly opened the packages from my family. Talked to them on the phone. Made myself a nice dinner. Watched Snakes on a Plane dubbed in Spanish, and called it an early night. Not the best Christmas ever, but not too shabby either.

Felizes festas em Lisboa!

I feel like from now on a longer and longer amount of time will pass between blog entries. Maybe I can stem the tide with a New Year's Resolution.

So I was on the point of taking the apartment with the mamaphobe, but I decided to visit two more apartments, and one of them stuck. So since the beginning of December I've been living with an andaluz, Alberto, and a French guy, Greg. Both are really cool. Alberto does computer animation and Greg is doing a professional exchange at a TV station.

Then a couple of weeks ago I went to Granada, with another auxiliar, Molly for a three day weekend. For some reason it didn't occur to us, three day weekend, everyone will be traveling... hmmm... let's make a hostel reservation. so we wandered around aimlessly looking for a place to stay when finally as a last resort we ended up staying with Molly's ex-boyfriend and his family. They are from Brazil, and amazingly welcoming. It wasn't exactly what I expected but I got some awesome Brazilian food out of the deal. I also saw my cousin Jenna who is an auxiliar down there.

Now I'm in Lisbon. Being an absolute tourist. Today I saw o Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, the most beautiful monastery I've ever seen. Okay as far as I know it's only the second monastery I've ever seen after El Escorial, but it was amazing. I arrived alone but have ended doing a lot with another guy from my hostel. Just as I'm missing home most, the travel gods decided to send me a little bit of Chicago in an unexpected way, this guy Lucio, another Brazilian, who is returning home in a roundabout way from a year working in Chicago. And much as when I got back from Chile I wouldn't talk about anything else, he was really excited to talk Chicago. Unfortunately, as soon as I got here the cold I've been holding back for the past couple days hit me, so I've been going at a pretty slow pace, but that's all right. Lisbon is absolutely beautiful. This hostel, Goodnight Backpacker's Hostel, is maybe the friendliest I've ever been in. So even if I don't see everything it's a good change of pace.

i´ll be there for you...

So after a couple of months living in Carabanchel at José's(for the visual learners: http://maps.google.es/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=110664284521662654017.00045c7584d62b907667d&ie=UTF8&ll=40.411666,-3.750629&spn=0.233697,0.439453&z=11 ), I decided to start looking at apartments again mainly due to logistics. If I want to do something downtown in the afternoon and something downtown at night it is always uncomfortable to try to make it home and back. At least a half hour each way, more if Atletico Madrid has a home soccer game. Two weeks ago after returning late from a day trip to El Escorial I ended up missing a movie I wanted to see at an LGBT film festival, not a huge loss but I'm supposed to be seizing the day over here so I steeled myself to start apartment hunting... again. By moving to the northwest side of Madrid I can get much closer to the centro without getting much farther from school. I´m looking in the area between the Moncloa bus station and the centro.

If my quest were purely logistic, I would probably be done by now, but like many of my generation I am afflicted with Friends syndrome, the irrational belief that I can live cheaply in a spacious appartment in a trendy neighborhood with a group of friends who are like my family while pursuing my dreams as an actor, a hippy, a fashion designer, a chef, an archeologist or... wait what is it that Chandler does?.

Okay it´s mainly the group of friends that's the hang up. If I'm honest with myself a big part of my motivation is the hope that if I move in with a group of 2 or 3 chill madrileños about my age I will instantly have the social life I feel that I am lacking right now. But of course such close knit groups of friends aren't typically looking for a one-year passer through, and that's especially true in Spain where it seems like people usually have the same group of friends from diapers to diapers. So holding out for the right feel, I've now passed on a couple of acceptable offers, and I'm starting to lose energy.

I'm debating taking a place in Chueca, the gay ghetto of Madrid. My roommates would be a Colombian about my age and a middle aged Brasilian. I hate to say it but I'm kind of hung up on national origin, too. I'd like to live with madrileños failing that Spaniards failing that at least native Spanish speakers. Plus, this place is maybe too in the middle of things. Right above a discoteca. And I should worn any female readers who may have wanted to visit, that one bad hetero roommate and his girlfriend ruined it for you all. The Brazilian has banned any overnight visitors with breasts. While I waffle, someone else has probably jumped on it anyway.

Of course during the course of the apartment search, I have started to develop a social life based around COGAM, the LGBT collective. I started out going to an English language learners discussion group and keep getting sucked deeper and deeper in. I now go to a purely social group conducted in Spanish on Saturday night, and next Saturday I will take my first turn of duty in la patrulla condonera, that's right the condom patrol. So maybe I can let go of the Friends fantasy... but just as I prepare to do that I find this article in the good old New York Times about Daniel Vosovic's apartment. The man who lost Project Runway but won our hearts, seems to be living the dream albeit at 5,000 dollars a month: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/realestate/23habi.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

What do you think, do I stick it out for the perfect apartment of hip twenty-somethings or do I go with the mamaphobic Brazilian?

robbed!

Oops So all of this actually happened like a month ago, but i never posted it. I'll post something new soon, I promise.

Ah so much has happened since I wrote that last post (I didn't publish it right away). Following the ratings-grab method of the evening news I will start with the crime reports and then move on to human interest.

I was robbed for what I'm pretty sure is the first time ever Friday night. Sometime in between buying my third beer and reaching into my pocket to buy my fourth my wallet disappeared. Hmm could the nature of these purchases have contributed to the crime? Luckily I only brought as much cash as I wanted to spend that night. But they got my health insurance card and my monthly metro pass. Being the sentimental sap that I am for me the biggest losses are the wallet itself, my favorite wallet ever made out of an old tie, and the fortune cookie message I mentioned in my first blog entry: "Your dreams will bring you into a profitable venture." Yeah a profit that will be promptly swiped.

The weird thing is Thursday night I had a dream that people were trying to pick pocket me. This group of three guys came up to me and pretended to hit on me as they groped for my pockets. In the dream, however I was aware of what was going on and stopped it. In reality, I was so unaware that I was being robbed that it came as a shock when I found out. That was the worst part I think, how completely unaware I was. I mean I guess that's the way pickpocketing works and all, but it's so unnerving.

The night wasn't a total loss. I might this Chilean guy, a friend of a friend of a friend, who went to the same school I went to when I was in Chile. That was fun.

Friday afternoon I went to Casa de Campo, a park west of Madrid so named because it used to be the king and queen's country home. One thing monarchy's got going for it is that the lavish habits of the royals generate lots of old beautiful buildings and properties. It seems like just about every neighborhood of Madrid has an old palace, many of which are now museums or community centers or parks. It was one of those moments where I let myself switch into full on tourist mode. Nose in a map of the park. Camera out to snap pictures of what to everyone else seems inane. Like the parakeets for example. I must have spent a half an hour trying to get a picture of the docile flock of escaped parakeets. Some nature photographer I am.

Second impressions at school

Remember back when I said, "I just waltz in there 16 hours a week, who am I to judge?" Well, I should have followed my own advice. After another couple of weeks I'm beginning to have better idea why the teachers act like they do. Much as in most urban school districts in the US, public schools in Madrid are underfunded and understaffed. Anyone who can afford to sends their kids to private school. The conservative madrileño government is steadily cutting back on education funding. If Eva seemed pessimistic and impatient, then it was only because she's had her patience tested to the limit. If it didn't seem like Cristina was putting very much energy in to class, it was because she's overworked.

The cultural differences still get to me sometimes, though. The school system these teachers grew up in was infamously strict. Many things have changed. Teachers are called by their first names, for example. However, the environment is still really different from the elementary school I remember where promoting self-esteem and creativity were top priorities. As Halloween approaches we're doing lot's of bats and ghosts and pumpkins. Bats are black. Ghosts are white. Pumpkins are orange. Any divergence from this may be tolerated but it won't be encouraged. In one class a boy had made a really cool brown and purple bat, but he was sent to his table to recolor the whole thing plane black. This was just a time filler coloring page, too. It's not like the directions said, "Color the bat black." I could understand that. It's just that bats are black. Period.

the catalan question, or what not to say in Madrid

As you may know I am a hardcore babelist, which is a term I just coined for someone who stubbornly supports the preservation of the world's tenuous linguistic diversity. On the eastern coast of Spain they speak another language Catalan, which the relatively autonomous regional government recognizes as its official language but the federal government does not recognize as a n official language of Spain. I tend to sympathize with the catalinistas, even though the language preservation I support gets tangled in with some closed-minded nationalist bullshit. Okay, thanks for bearing with the abstract intellectual intro, now we can move onto the anecdote...

Last night I was hanging out with Jose, Ismael from school, and some of their friends, and they started digging into Catalunya. If I have been a little too hung up on stereotypes lately, maybe it is because many of the Spaniards I have met like to go on and on about how a certain group is. Los chinos son así. Los marroquís son así. If one of my friends from the US starting going on about, "The Chinese are like this." I would feel compelled to stop him or her and say, "ummm actually Chinese people are a collection of diverse individuals." Here though I'm more inclined to take it with a grain of salt, though it always makes me squirm. But anyway they got going on the Catalans. The Catalans are much more cold and distant than other Spaniards. The Catalans are so closed minded. The Catalans just shoot themselves in the foot by requiring all of the university professors to speak Catalan. Albert Einstein couldn't teach at a Catalan university. I sat on my hands and listened like a good little foreigner trying to learn the lay of the land before he threw himself into a sensitive, controversial topic.

But when me and Jose got home, I couldn't hold myself back. This one of my core beliefs after all, granted one of my most impractical and idealistic core beliefs. Always hedging with "well, I may not really understand the situation but as a linguist," I told him that it might not make sense to him, but given the long term repression of the Catalan language, I can see why they would take radical steps to bolster it now that they have more regional autonomy. There was of course no way I was going to change his mind. He's right there is a lot of political posturing involved and it does mean more qualified professors who only speak Spanish will be turned away. But in my mind it's a kind of linguistic affirmative action, and it's worth the costs.

In other news I officially have lived in Madrid for more than a month. There are still a lot of ups an downs as I continue to adjust. Hell I could stay here ten years and still be adjusting, but it's safe to say it's the end of the beginning and that feels pretty good.

Now I think I'll go try and survive the free afternoon at the Prado. Wish me luck.

okay, now I can relax

I was reading an article in the magazine section of El País about los frikis, a blanket term for anyone who dresses outside the box, and I find out I´m a gafapasta. "The gafapasta are a friki subtribe known for their intellectual tendencies, their interest in the arts, in addition to using, naturally, their distinctive plastic glasses (gafas de pasta)." Phew, I was starting to get worried, now I can just go around Madrid asking, "Are you a gafapasta?" and in no time I will have found my pretentious thick-glasses brethren.

There is even a wiki-style website devoted to cataloging all the urban tribes:

http://www.frikipedia.es/friki/Gafapasta

estoy malito

One week working with kids and I´m already sick. Not too sick or anything just a sore throat wanna sleep all day kind of sick. Luckily I have Fridays off work, so I got to sleep all day. I´ve watched the better part of a season of Dos Metros Abajo, i.e. Six Feet Under, and now as promised I´ll do the school spiel.

I work at a small public school in Pozuelo de Alarcón a town just west of Madrid. It used to be a sleepy little pueblo, but has grown a sprawling halo of really rich gated communities, corporate headquarters, and big box stores. I work in the part that used to be the sleepy little pueblo. The student body is probably about half immigrants from Morroco, Romania, Bulgaria and Latin America. There´s this one guy whose parents work for the UN in Sudan, "But for some reason I had to leave, I don´t really understand why." That just about broke my heart.

They are phasing in a bilingual program. Grades 1-4 have English and Science in theory entirely in English. I work mainly with the 1st and 4th grades, plus a couple of classes with the 5th and 6th. The 1st grade teacher, Eva, is a little intense. This is her first year working in the public schools, and with such young kids, and the discipline problems are driving her crazy (me too actually). She´s pretty pesimistic about it all, which makes it a little tough for me, but she´s a good teacher and we get along fine. Cristina teaches 4th grade and she´s maybe a little too laid back. For example, she´ll take five minutes to have a conversation with me about nothing too important while the kids run around the room. But who am I to critcize either of them, I just waltz in there 16 hours a week and after one week I´m sick. It´s challenging but rewarding.

I started giving some private lessons for a a neighborhood association run by a bunch of overbearing mother types. Right now it´s kind of a hassle. I thought we had agreed on the prices, but some of the parents want to bargain more. It´s not strictly about the money, at this point, I just feel like they´re trying to push me around and I don´t like that. I think I´m gonna tell them to take it leave it, if only I knew how to say that.

the metro

So after meeting up with fellow Macalester alumna Charlotte, I found myself in the metro listening to a musician play the score of Amelie on an acordeon thinking, "How delightfully continental!" (Of course he probably was only playing this because he knew that the foreigners would think "Oh how delightfully continental!" and give him money.) But as I turned the corner on to the platform I found my expat reverie interrupted by a pair of frat boys turned corporate tools. I immediately judged them. The easiest way out of an identity crisis, is to define yourself in opposition to someone else after all. But I checked myself. Had I not just been talking to Charlotte about how I felt judged by madrileños for being a foreigner? How could I be such a hypocrite? So I decided to eavesdrop on them, which was not hard to do. And what were they talking about? One of them was recounting how he had seen a Mexican in a Home Depot back in the states using a funny gesture to ask for a plunger. And the other responded, "that´s weird cuz everyone who works at Home Depot is a Mexican. They shoulda just spoke Spanish." They went on to an enlightening discourse concerning which US celebrities would like to live at each metro stop on a nearby map. Chueca of course would be home to Boy George. So I said fuck it and went back to judging them.

Of course, one of the stereotypes of Gringos that José insists I uphold is a stubborn unwillingness to adapt. Considering that anti-immigrant sentiment is a strong current in Spanish politics I suppose those dudes were doing a better job at assimilation than me. Even things like bike-commuting or making out with boys that I proudly think of as setting me apart from the red-blooded cowboy types, become stereotypically American when I refuse to budge to fit in with Madrid. For example, I keep on talking about buying a bike to get around, and José insists that this would be not only dangerous but worse still culturally inappropriate. No one in Madrid rides bikes, according to him. I mean it´s dangerous and culturally inapporiate back in Crystal Lake, too. But I wonder, when in Rome is it okay to ignore what theRomans do as long as you´re doing out of a desire to promote positive change (oh god, that word just isn´t the same anymore)? How does one assimilate when his fragile little postadolescent identity is so deeply rooted in deliberate defiance of cultural norms? At any rate as long as the metro keeps running and providing interesting anecdotes, I doubt I will buy that bike, but once I get that first pay check of euros burning a whole in my pocket who knows....

(p.s. I have you noticed that my favorite punctuation mark is the ellipsis, although I´m sure any good editor would hate the way I use it.)

(p.p.s. In more mundane news I started working at my school last Wednesday, and I started some private lessons today. Some day I´ll do the rundown of the school and such, but right now I have no desire to do that.)

a travel parable

I burnt myself today trying to make a grilled cheese sandwich. It seems like it should be simple, but using a baguette instead of a gringo style loaf bread, and a kind of cheese I´m not used to, and olive oil instead of butter, and a stove I´m still not entirely used to, it quickly got complicated. If on the other hand I had tried to make a bocadillo de jamón serrano...

Finde 2: drums in the park and Toledo

This is a long one so I divided it into to parts to make it easier to digest:

Part 1, Sunday, El Retiro

"There´s something in a Sunday that makes a body feel alone," croons Johnny Cash, and he´s right. Especially if your wandering around aimlessly in a city you´re just getting to know. And it´s that first cloudy, breezy day that let´s you know it´s definitely Fall. And everyone seems to be with someone else except you. And you just missed an appointment  to see an apartment that seemed really promising because you hit the snooze too many times.

So I rambled across town to what is at least for the time being my favorite café. It´s called Café Acuarela, and it has this great window that juts out into the street, so that you can people watch shamelessly with a pane of glass to protect you. And it´s just of Plaza de Chueca, "the gay plaza" to put it away I rather wouldn´t, so the people watching is good. Prostitutes with a wide range of gender identities, trendy young  couples of various orientations,  little old abuelas who have lived in the neighborhood since Franco kept these kind of vices in check but don´t bat an eyelash at the new neighbors. Journaled  a little. Read a little. Extremely loud and incredibly close which is phenomenal, and not exactly a pick me up, but kind of is because it makes you feel less lonely because everyone´s at least kinda lonely.

Then I rambled a little farther across town to el Retiro, "the Central Park of Madrid" to put it a way I rather wouldn´t put it.  And I´m midway through the gauntlet of dead white guys when I hear the unmistakable sound of a slap on a hand drum in the distance. Suddenly, my aimless wandering has an aim. I make towards the drum as best I can, indulging in the fantasy that it´s a group of Ghanians playing waka even though I know it´s not that likely. There are a lot of West African immigrants in Madrid, though. Finally I come across a lone drummer practicing with headphones. Slightly, disappointed I look for a bench at a safe enough distance that it´s not awkward, and I  hear another drum. I follow it to an artificial lake where I find another lone drummer banging away on a djembe-like drum, but I hear another drum and I follow that one. It´s more than one drum! I hear multiple parts fitting together in an intelligible pattern. Hand drums, rattles, stick drums. Following a call and response pattern! I dare to dream that it actually is West African, maybe even Ghanian. Finally, I come across a crowd behind a giant statue of a man in the fetal position. I climb up on top of a little wall-fence thing too see. They´re Colombians actually, but it´s really cool. The dancers are probably even better than the drumming. I watch awhile and leave satisfied. Go home, make some herbal tea, listen to some Johnny cash, write this and now I feel great.

Part 2, Saturday, Toledo

Okay, now rewind to Saturday, me and José go to Toledo and meet some of his friends. They´re married with kids, but  lot´s of fun. From the left that´s Manolo, a neighbor, Ismael, the co-worker who hooked me up with José, Manolo´s wife Cristina, me of course, Cristina and Manolo´s daughter Irene, and finally Ismael´s wife Ruth with their son Miguel.  I can´t say exactly why, but I really like Ruth a lot. She´s eager to make conversation and patient with my Spanish, but it´s more than that. In the background is the cathedral. Having one Spaniard to show you around is perfect,  but four is a little overwhelming. One of them would be explaining life under Franco, while one of them would be telling me how Queen Isabela sent Columbus to the new world (the one fact about Spanish history most Americans actually know), and someone else explained the difference between a Gothic and Roman cathedral, and someone else pointing out the view of the River Tajo. After a while I think they could tell I had had enough and they all chilled out a bit.

Toledo is magical, and therefore very toursity, but not so touristy that it ceases to be magical. The streets are even smaller than Calle del Codo. Sometimes the houses are built right out over the street forming a sort of archway called a cobertizo. Toledo was the capital until about 1600. It has a Jewish, Muslim, and Christian quarter each very noticeably different. While the Jews and Muslims kept the differences subtle, the Christians went out of the way to plaster huge crucifixes on every building just so it was clear. We´re talking life-sized with Jesus and the whole nine yards.

The irony of the layering of names in a town this old really struck me. One of the synagogues was renamed after the  Jews got kicked out: Sinagoga de Santa María la Blanca or Saint Mary the White´s Synagogue. Never thought I´d see that. Then another thousand years down the road the tourists brought another layer of culture: a vegetarian restaurant on Calle de la Tripería, roughly  Street Where We Sell the Innards of Animals. Yum.  This one-time vegetarian went ahead and tried the blood sausage. It´s not every day that you get to go back to the Middle Ages.

baffled by the nation-state

So me and José got to talking last night about traveling and stereotypes and national identity. He said that he was really surprised when he went to San Francisco, because he expected it to be more like Texas, even though he never had been to Texas. And then he met me and he said he was surprised by how socially conscious I was. I tried to say that if there was any such thing as typically American, neither I nor San Francisco are it, but he said that wasn´t the point, and he´s right. Both me and San Francisco certainly are inextricably American, and I don´t why I was trying to convince José that America sucks and I´m not part of it. Luckily, he was too smart for that. The best part about going abroad is that it reminds me that I do in fact love the U.S. of A., even in the midst of this torturous election year.
Then he asked me what Americans think about Spain. And I didn´t quite know what to say. I told him we don´t think that much about Spain, which I think is fairly true. Then I tried to sum up what I thought about Spain before I came here, but it´s hard to rewind like that. The first thing that came to mind actually was Ernest Hemmingway, bull fighting, basques drinking wine out of goat skin sacks, Carmen, flamenco, La Casa de Bernarda Alba, Don Quijote, chivalry, but also gay marriage and socialism. But I´m curious what other people think. Obviously, you´ve all been prejudiced by reading this, but I´d like to know what you think about when you think about Spain.
I hope that wasn´t too boring. It´s what´s on my mind right now. I´m working on getting more pictures up, but that involves getting my computer connected to the internet which is a little complicated since I don´t have wifi. Those other ones were from José´s camera.

Apartment search

So I´m watching some nuns on a cooking show on TV and thinking maybe I should just join a convent. Good simple food. Bells telling you when you have to do something. Sounds kind of nice right now. Looking for an appartment is hard. I never really did that before, I always joined the project after that step was already accomplished. Looking for a room in a shared appartment is even harder, but that´s my ideal: an appartment shared with chill Spaniards about my age. Living with José has been a great help, but I think I need to try and find something with people my age. The probem is it seems like most people exactly my age still live with their parents here, but I´ve been finding lots of listings with slightly older twentysomethings. I went to visit the first one last night. It´s a little too expensive but the location is perfect. Close to a bus station that will take me to my school and 2 metro stops away from down town. The people seemed really cool too, really chic young profesionals. Maybe too chic. I didn´t really get the impression they were going to call me back, but we´ll see.

Look I´m a tourist!

José Antonio took me an a walking tour down town today. First we saw the palace.
Then to the Plaza de la Villa, which was the central plaza of the city when the city was a village, and is home to the narrowest street in Madrid, Calle del Codo. Personally, I would call it an alley, I in fact did call it an alley, but José Antonio insisted it was a street and had the sign to prove it.

Then we went to the Plaza Mayor, the reigning central plaza of Madrid. Much like the streets and elevators and everything else in Madrid, José Antonio is small but cool.

I´d write more but you wouldn´t believe how long it took me to get the format to look like this.

Washingtondcdublinmadrid: or what the hell time is it?

Well, my stomach just woke me up at 1:30 in the morning (that woud be 6:30 pm in Chicago I think) and said, "That was a nice aternoon nap. Where´s dinner?" However, if I´m ever going to get back on track the most I´m willing to give to my poor beleaguered stomach is a midnight snack and a blog entry.

Yesterday evening I completed the epic mulitstop journey from Chicago to Spain. First, I stopped in D.C. to visit Ross. Higlights include: visiting a hipstery bar in a gentrifying neighborhood, getting proselytized by Evangelicals, trying Yuengling (America´s oldest beer), getting proselytized by Scientologists, and playing kickball on the Mall in sight of the Washington Monument. Plus a lot of hauling my entire life all over the place and clinging nervously to my passport.

Then Sunday evening I got on a redeye to Dublin, and barely slept a wink, but I had an 8 hour layover so of course i had to explore. I Stumbled out of the airport, tried to understand the bus system for a second, and then just gave up, took a deep breath and got on the bus everyone else was getting on. On the way back into the airport, I noticed the friendly person in the clearly marked bus information kiosk, but oh well the blindly following strategy worked and got me downtown where I wanted to be. Highlights include: the really old and beautiful Old Library at Trinity College and a cool little cafe I found with my lonely planet (thanks for the lonely planet, Grace). Then back to the airport for the two hour flight to Spain, at which point too much worrying and coffee and too little food and sleep had turned my stomach into a pit of acid.

But yay! I finally made it to Spain. I´m staying with Jose Antonio, the previously mentioned friend of a co-worker at least for the time being, but it´s looking more and more like I´ll stay here long term. I slept an incredible fourteen hours last night, and then Jose Antonio showed around the neighborhood and the downtown area by car.

Further assurance that I won't be living in a box!

The secretary at my school says that a friend of his has a room I can stay in at least until I find something better! This makes leaving a lot less scary.

3 reasons why I'm going to Spain...

3.After four years of too little sleep and too much reading, I'm afraid my brain has dried up on me and I just might be a little crazy.* It's time to stop deconstructing and go off tilting at some windmills! Nothing can get me out of my head like the sheer sensory overload of being in some new far-off place. So here I go: a year of less thinking/reading/writing and more experiencing/doing. Of course, I can't kick the over-analyzing habit cold turkey, so you, my adoring public, will get to read my musings here. yay!

2.Shortly after graduation I received a fortune cookie message that reads: "Your dreams will bring you into a profitable venture." This gives me carte blanche to do whatever the hell I want without fearing the possibility of living in a box.

1. I am the biggest Spanish nerd in the world. I salivate over bizarre archaisms, and yet I have the conversational ability of an 8 year old at best.

*For those of you monolingual gringos who give us all a bad name: This first sentence is a paraphrase of that quote up there and the very nerdy origin of the name of this very cool blog.
(Look at me writing foot notes as I swear off academia, I'm hopeless.)